Rest assured, East Coast, Uncle Sam will be there for you in cleaning up. You may have to swap some other government services down the road for the immediate help, but hey, the most critical thing now is that your political leaders have arrived to do the math.

Rest assured, East Coast, Uncle Sam will be there for you in cleaning up. You may have to swap some other government services down the road for the immediate help, but hey, the most critical thing now is that your political leaders have arrived to do the math.

Earlier this week, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said on Fox News Channel that Congress would "find the money if there is a need" to assist ravaged local communities in the wake of the twin wallop of an earthquake and a hurricane, but that it would mean offsetting the price tag dollar for dollar "with appropriate savings or cost-cutting elsewhere."

You know, it goes without saying - which is why it should have been left unsaid - that the federal government has unprecedented budget challenges, that this is one more its leaders hadn't reckoned on, that "monies are not unlimited" and that it's probably going to require moving some dollars around. But with 41 people dead in 11 states as a result of Hurricane Irene as of this writing, $7 billion and counting in estimated property damage, nearly 3 million people still without power, homes and roads and businesses under water or swept away, don't you want a firefighter coming to your rescue right now rather than a bean counter to remind you the meter is running? Don't you want to hear from a sympathizer-in-chief rather than a scold-in-chief lecturing you about the foolishness of borrowing to buy that car when you should have been planning in advance for a loved one to get sick?

Cantor will forgive many Americans the impression that even acts of God are not beyond being exploited for political aims, that this will lead to another round of budget bartering, a la the debt ceiling debate. (Your road cleared of debris for the privatization of Medicare? Deal!) Relieved though the 85 million Americans in Irene's path no doubt are to hear that "this is the appropriate time and instance where there is a federal government role" - it beats "pick yourself up by your own bootstraps" - are any of them surprised the opportunity wasn't taken to ask for further tax cuts, too?

Oh, maybe this was one of those spur-of-the-moment, response-to-a-question comments and one is being too hard on the GOP leader. To be sure, Cantor's House has passed a bill replenishing the FEMA disaster aid fund by some $1 billion that the Senate has yet to act upon. Let's just say that if former FEMA Director Michael Brown - the "Heckuva job, Brownie" of Hurricane Katrina infamy - agrees with you, as is the case here, you ought to go looking for other allies. Comedy Central will be all over this. Wait, it already is.

It's no laughing matter in the nation's Northeast - comprised of blue states, to be sure - where the likes of New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, etc., have been pounded not only by high winds but by torrential rains and record flooding. They had advance warning of that, of course. Critical though one may be of the accountant's approach to disaster management, that is not to suggest that folks don't have some self-responsibility, in the calm before the storm, because they do.

First, if the mayor tells you to evacuate, you need to fill up the trunk and go visit the cousins in the Midwest. While thousands certainly did in response to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's warnings, it is alarming to read that the residents of New Orleans may have done a better job of hightailing it, pre-Katrina, than New Yorkers did, pre-Irene. That Manhattan was largely spared was pure luck.

Second, rising sea levels and a heavily populated coastline are not exactly a match made in heaven. If you want to risk it, knowing what you now know, that's your business, but it ought not be everybody's. Cantor & Co. make a point there.

All that said, in the "real world" that politicians are so fond of invoking, the vast majority of families do not and cannot prepare for every conceivable calamity. Sometimes life throws you a curve. A back-to-back earthquake/hurricane qualifies as an especially wicked one. A little compassion for that is certainly in order, unless you're one of those who can't quite figure out why the opinion polls regarding Washington's decision-makers are scraping bottom these days. Congressman Cantor may want to mull that over, while vowing to work on his timing.

Journal Star of Peoria, Ill.

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